Week-Long Service Experience, St. John's Bread & Life

 photos by Goma

Reflections by volunteer Emily H., age 21

Emily will be entering her senior year this fall at college in Pennsylvania where she studies English and Japanese.

Tuesday, June 8

Today was the third day I’ve worked in St. John’s MSK (Mobile Soup Kitchen)—two more to go, and it’s definitely been an interesting experience. I’ve worked in soup kitchens before, but never on wheels or for this amount of time.

I chose to work at St. John’s because we had already done one day there as a group and I thought it would be fairly simple. It’s true that spooning vegetables into hundreds of Styrofoam containers doesn’t require an awful lot of brain power, but that means I get to think about other things, like the people to whom we’re giving the food. Unless I’m handing out the meals there aren’t a lot of opportunities to people-watch, and even then I still have to concentrate on moving as fast as possible.

However, I have stolen moments here and there to wonder about the hungry people in line—how old are they? How long have they been receiving meals from organizations like St. John’s? Why do some stand off to the side for a half an hour and then join the line? And of course I will never know.

The thing that bothers me most is that I have to assume the worst. Since we can’t give more than one serving to a person unless they have children with them or there are no more people in line, sometimes people will eat and then get back in line and pretend not to have done so. I dislike handing out the food for this reason; I have a very bad memory for faces and probably won’t remember if someone does double back.

The majority of the people who come to the van do understand that we will give seconds when everyone else has eaten, but just those few who don’t make me uneasy and also sad, because for all I know they won’t be eating anything else until the next day. I really wish there weren’t reasons to be skeptical or suspicious of those who are hungry, and maybe eventually there won’t be.